ANCHORAGE - It's not a suicide note. It’s a murder note.
The handwritten message left behind by deceased serial killer Israel Keyes was released by the FBI Wednesday morning.
The note apparently does not refer to specific murders, but it is full of references to Keyes' predatory mindset.
The suspected killer of up to a dozen people, including three known victims, did nothing to soften his image for posterity before he killed himself in an Anchorage jail cell on December 2.
The blood-soaked note was found with Keyes' body, after he slit his wrists with a razor and strangled himself with the bedding in his cell.
It was first sent to FBI headquarters in Quantico, Virginia, to be cleaned and made legible, and then a second time for analysis of the content.
“The notes were analyzed by our cryptoanalysis unit," said Eric Gonzalez, the FBI spokesman in Anchorage. "Those guys are the code breakers. And they were looking for any kind of hidden codes, messages in the writings themselves. They may have some kind of investigative value. After looking at it, it was determined there was nothing in there that could lead to potential, other possible victims."
The note, written on a legal pad with both pencil and ink, is actually a poem.
In it, Keyes takes aim at Americans and what he sees as American values, and also expresses his atheism: "Family and friends will shed a few tears, pretend it's off to heaven you go. But the reality is you were just bones and meat, and with your brain died also your soul.
"...Consume what you don't need, stars you idolize, pursue what you admit is a dream, then its [sic] american [sic] die.”
And he shines a light on his dark impulses: "Okay, talk is over, words are flacid [sic] and weak. back it with action or it all comes off, cheap. watch close while i work now, feel the electric shock of my touch, open my trembling flower, or your petals I’ll crush"
Gonzalez said he’s not going to attempt an interpretation. "We're not offering any commentary as to possible -- what some of those phrases -- some possible meanings to some of the writings."
And that appears to conclude the Anchorage FBI office's involvement with the Keyes case. However, outreach is going on in the rest of the country, with a press release in the Dallas area, because of Keyes' known connections to Texas.
Now while the note apparently does not have any relevance to outstanding missing persons or homicide cases, it might still be valuable to the behavioral sciences unit of the FBI, as profilers continue work on understanding the minds of serial killers.
Meanwhile, how Keyes was able to kill himself -- after earlier having been placed on suicide watch -- remains something of a mystery.
State Representative Max Gruenberg of Anchorage is trying to arrange a briefing on the subject with the Department of Corrections, but both sides told KTVA Wednesday that it has not been scheduled yet.
